In the digital world of the 21st century, are dioramas an effective teaching tool? Some educators want teachers to abandon sugar cubes and shoe boxes for more high tech activities, insisting dioramas do not require students to engage in complex problem solving and critical thinking. However, there is no reason to dump the diorama. With a well-structured lesson, building a diorama requires students to analyze primary sources, deeply understand content, support a thesis, and solve engineering challenges to build a structure that incorporates key elements of design. Dioramas are sophisticated stuff.

When I was working on my undergraduate degree in the early 1980’s, a boyfriend questioned my choice of major. “Why does history matter anyway? What’s a history degree going to get you besides winning at Trivial Pursuit?”

Although I relished beating this guy every time we played the board game, my pursuit of the past had loftier aims. For 26 years I taught history to high school students. Now I write history books for children and teens. You see, I knew all along what my boyfriend didn’t. Understanding history isn’t trivial. It’s vital.

Glimpse war through the eyes of soldiers.

https://judydodgecummings.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Black-soldiers-in-civil-war.jpg316500Judy Dodge Cummingshttp://judydodgecummings.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/logo3.pngJudy Dodge Cummings2017-11-11 09:15:012018-02-23 10:27:29Through Their Eyes—Letters from Soldiers in the Civil War

In a previous post, I discussed how history is a verb, not a noun. What does “doing history” look like in a classroom? Here is a fun activity teachers can use to introduce students to the skill of analyzing primary sources.

Historians dissect primary sources such as letters, diaries, court documents, or song lyrics in their quest to interpret the past. They systematically examine each component of the source in order to make sense of the whole. Read more

https://judydodgecummings.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/I-love-letter.jpg27924125Judy Dodge Cummingshttp://judydodgecummings.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/logo3.pngJudy Dodge Cummings2017-10-24 09:03:202018-01-29 21:44:31Teach Students how to Analyze Sources and Give Them a Peek inside their Teacher’s Soul

Is history a noun or a verb? How a teacher answers this question can be seen in what goes on in his or her classroom. If you want to develop the minds of youth who are capable of thinking critically about the relationship between the past and the present, then don’t teach historyto students. Instead teach students to dohistory. Read more

The author of the Relentless Master is Judy Dodge Cummings, a former history teacher who has published 20 nonfiction books for children and teens. This is a blog about reading, writing, teaching, and living history. Posts are aimed at writers and teachers and fans of all things historical.